Page 213 of Sin With Me

I lowered my head into my hands, pulling on my hair, looking back up after a few moments. “I swear if I get her out of this, I will not have her do another job like this again.”

Julian put his arm around my shoulder. “Welcome to our world. But if you do that, you’ll lose Emma the way we lost her for a while.”

I knew they were right, and I knew there was no way I could make that kind of a stipulation for my girl. Whatever we decided, it had to be mutual and not forced.

When we landed, Derek’s car was already waiting for us on the tarmac. He’d left with his brother Blake. Tristan insisted on driving the black RAM on wheels suitable for a tractor.

The sun was sinking lower. Tristan didn’t obey the town’s imposed speed limit and flew through it like a hurricane. I was afraid Derek would have some explaining to do to the sheriff, as without a doubt the complaints would pile up. As we passed Ogden and neared Huntz’s house, the smell of burning wood, plastic and rubber hit me and my gut twisted into knots.

As soon as we pulled up, I couldn’t wait. Covering my face with my arm, I jumped out of the car and rushed toward the flames, even while thinking how surviving the blaze in front of me was impossible. There was no way to enter from the front. I jumped over the fence and ran from the yard to where the back door was still untouched by the fire. The smell of gasoline permeated the air. Unsure where my adrenaline came from, I kicked it open. If Emma was inside and I was too late, I’d let myself die along her side. The brothers were right behind me, shouting something I couldn’t make out, but it didn’t matter. I had to get to Emma. My eyes stung from the smoke, and I could barely see. A muffled sound echoed over the roaring flames,

In the middle of the room, tied to a chair was Hunter, bleeding from his face, bruised and gagged. I untied his arms while Julian pulled out the cloth from his mouth.

“Where’s Emma?” he coughed.

“Not here. Huntz tookher.”

We lifted Hunter under his arms. The guy yelped in pain and I was sure he had more than one brokenbone.

“Her tracking brought us here,” Julian explained.

“She dropped her phone.”

We pulled Hunter out just in time – the gas explosion inside the house rattled the ground underneath us. Sounds of an oncoming siren echoed in the distance, but if I knew our fire department, this place would be burnt down to nothing before they got here. That was a setback in our town. The medical and first-aid facilities were close to non-existent, hence my sister’s reasoning to go to San Francisco to become a nurse. This town’s infrastructure was only years ahead of the StoneAge.

“We need to organize a search team. Fuck! This will take too long!” Tristan paced back and forth beside the truck.

Where the hell could Huntz have taken her? He couldn’t have gotten far, and with the team of experts I’d heard the Cross brothers had already mobilized, Huntz would need to hide. Whoever got here within the next hour would be on the bastard’s trail in no time – but would it be fast enough? I knew too well what men like him were capable of, and vowed that if Emma even lost a hair, I’d kill the son of a bitch. There was only one place he could have gone to – a secret hideaway that had never been found by the police or anyoneelse.

“I know where she is,” I said, the memory of my abduction finally clear for the first time in a decade. “Followme.”

“Sorry, buddy, you need to take a bit more of this pain,” I said to Hunter.

“I’ve been through worse. This is nothing.”

We seated him in the back of the truck, and I made a mental note to clean the blood off later on. I tightened my grip on the wheel and drove back toward the fork in the road that led out of town, towards my parents’ house, and out to the forest the other way. A forest I’d run through as a kid but never remembered where it was untilnow.

An oncoming car was honking at us. I stopped when Missy’s old truck pulled over besideme.

“Eric, it’s him. Your parents’ house is on fire,” Missy cried. “I tried to warn them. I really did. I’m so sorry.”

I looked down the road toward my parents’ house and towards the entrance to the woods. My heart stopped as I turned toward the Cross brothers. Julian’s and Tristan’s faces paled, because they knew I was the only key they had now to find their sister; but if I chose that road, I ran the chance of never seeing my parents again.

---